L'état vous veut

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents.

The new law already has been challenged as unconstitutional by lawyers representing the petitioners. The issue of detainee rights is likely to reach the Supreme Court for a third time...

The third strike for Habeas Corpus.

And it's not just for people who aren't American citizens, campers. As pointed out by Peter Van Erp to the esteemed Dr. Juan Cole's virtual classroom, although the original Senate version specified the law applied to non citizens, that wording was removed by the House and wasn't present in the version our Dear Leader signed. Instead, it was:

" '...a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.'

"When the Senate version originally passed, the version published in Thomas as “Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by Senate” ( http://thomas.loc.gov/) included that language. That has lead to most of the media stating, as you did, that the Military Commissions Act does not apply to American citizens.

"In the past two weeks since the Senate passed S 3930, the published version has been changed to align with the House.

"I can only speculate that the language in the published version of S 3930 was not changed immediately after passage in order to mislead the media. The other possibility is that the Senate passed the bill as originally written, and persons unknown changed the published version in order to avoid the need for a reconciliation vote where the import of the bill could be revisited. In any case, the various efforts of the ACLU and others to correct the public perception are lost in the general furor, and the media keep repeating that the bill only applies to them. We have met the enemy and he is us..."

If the Blackwater/ DynCorp mercs working your neighborhood for the usual terra'ist suspects (hypothetically) under the Authority of Darth Rumsfeld say you're an Enemy Combatant because you couldn't pay 'em off, to the work camp you go. The Company needs a certain number of warm bodies occupying their facility to justify their budget. Nothing personal.

More interesting Constitutional points at Informed Comment here, and all over the good doctor's site.